Sarah runs into Delvin

Sarah didn’t bother dressing fully. She yanked the zipper halfway up her jumpsuit, jammed her feet into the nearest pair of boots, and snatched the pistol back off the nightstand. Every inch of her skin felt electric, crawling with the aftertaste of that impossible encounter.

The corridors outside her berth were deserted, bathed in that same sickly emergency glow. The ship moaned faintly around her, like something vast and wounded shifting in its sleep.

She kept the pistol raised as she moved, each step measured, soft.

The silence was oppressive, suffocating, broken only by the occasional pop of a failing light fixture or the distant clank of metal contracting against cold.

Turning a corner near the central spine of the ship, she nearly ran straight into Devlin.

He looked like hell.

His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his shirt clinging to his damp skin with sweat, his sidearm hanging loosely in one shaking hand. He flinched back instinctively when he saw her, shoulders tensing as if expecting another nightmare to materialize.

When he realized it was her, something in him sagged — not quite relief, but something close to it.

"Sarah," he rasped. His voice was raw, hollow.

"Devlin," she breathed, lowering her weapon a fraction. "You saw something too."

Not a question. A statement.

He gave a short, broken laugh and scrubbed a trembling hand down his face. "More than saw."

They stood there for a beat in the flickering half-light, two wrecks tossed together in a sea of unseen horrors.

Sarah’s hands tightened around her pistol. "I thought I was dreaming," she admitted. "But it felt... too real."

Devlin nodded slowly. "Same." His gaze darted around the hallway as if expecting something to lunge out of the shadows. "They're inside our heads."

A chill worked its way down Sarah’s spine. Not hallucinations. Not dreams.

Something is doing this to us.

She stepped closer, close enough to see the fear stitched into the corners of his mouth, the hard set of his jaw trying to mask how rattled he truly was.

"We need to find the XO," she said. "Wren, Torres. If they're still..."

She didn’t finish.

Because somewhere deep within the ship — so faint it could have been imagination — a low, drawn-out screech echoed through the ventilation ducts.

Metal on metal.

A keening, mechanical wail that made every hair on her body stand up.

Devlin heard it too. His whole body went rigid, his knuckles whitening around his pistol.

Sarah **** herself to breathe, to think.

"Move," she said, gripping his arm briefly to steady them both. "Now."

Together, weapons raised, they sprinted into the bowels of the ship — unaware that behind them, in the dark, unseen things were already beginning to stir.